Remasters Of The Universe

     As the world of music is getting longer in the tooth, reissues and remasters of various records are getting released as the albums approach their 30^th, 40^th and 50^th anniversaries.  Either that or a license expires on an album or a smaller labels catalogue and another label picks it up for a rerelease.

     This can be good news if a record has been out of print for a while or if long hours have been put in to cleaning up the sound on an old favorite.  But this could also spell disaster for a reissue if the label putting the records out is less concerned with quality than they are with the quantity of dollars they could possibly bring in.

     The David Bowie box sets that have been coming out every fall for the past few years leave a lot to be desired sonically.  The output volume of the albums seems to have been neglected along with there being several odd choices made in the mastering.  There were inconsistencies in the sound throughout.  Heroes was a great example of this from end to end.  I have finally given up and sworn off picking up any of these box sets in the future.   My scratchy old vinyl will more than suffice. Maybe if Parlophone spent as much time on the music as they do on the packaging they wouldn't have lost a customer.

     The Sound System box set of the five Clash albums was painstakingly remastered by guitarist Mick Jones.  The last time anyone had touched those albums was back in the 90s and the only thing that seems to have been done was a boost to the low end frequencies but neglecting the mids and the highs.  Mick Jones made it very clear at the outset of the remastering that this would be the last time he would be involved in any Clash release so he was not playing around.  I was not even halfway through “Janie Jones” when it felt like I was listening to The Clash for the first time.  By the end of “White Riot,” I was in tears due to the Joe Strummer shaped void in my soul.

     Reissue labels, such as 4 Men With Beards, are a mixed bag.  It's great to see the chances that they take putting records back out into the world but they only master for digital purposes and use the same master for vinyl.  The analog spectrum is broader than the digital spectrum which causes distortion because the digital spectrum is being stretched to fit into the analog.  I keep harping on the recent Wire reissues that the band put out themselves because the first Pink Flag vinyl I heard was the 4 Men With Beards pressing and the difference is night and day.  The guitar tone on “Ex Lion Tamer” knocked me on the floor.

     There are also labels, like Sanctuary, and to some extent, Cleopatra, that will license an entire artists or smaller labels catalogue.  They'll do a small run of colored vinyl, slap a “New And Improved” hype sticker on the cover that will quickly go out of print but then do nothing with the license until it expires.  It's almost as if they pick up the rights to these albums just to say they own them and have these bands on their label.  As if owning these licenses provides them some sort of hipster street cred.

     Then there are labels (SST, I'm looking at you) that really need to go back and revisit their catalogue.  With a roster that includes the Minute Men, The Stains, Husker Du and Black Flag, those records are screaming to be properly reissued.  Given the technological and budgetary constraints involved when those albums were recorded, most of them sound flat and muddy.  Instead of suing former bandmates and having videos pulled off of YouTube, maybe Greg Ginn should spend some time with the Punk Rock history that he's sitting on and get to remastering.  And maybe he could start to set things right by paying everyone the royalties they'd be due from these hypothetical reissues.  Then again maybe pigs will fly someday.

     The Internet is not the best place to go for opinions on how a specific reissue sounds due to the subjectivity and personal preference involved.  But it can be helpful to notice if the majority of the Internet is not happy about a remastering.  In those cases, it's probably best to stay away since nobody on the internet ever agrees about anything.

     This is another reason why I end up owning multiple copies of the same record.  Yes, I have an original pressing of that record that no one cares about.  But I also have the remastered anniversary pressing that no one cares about either.  And I should probably be ashamed to say that I regularly spend my Friday nights with a pot of coffee while listening to them both back to back.  That's how I party on the weekends.